


Scrapbook

by MatildaSwan



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Memories, Momentos, Multi, Photographes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MatildaSwan/pseuds/MatildaSwan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen might have the memory of an elephant but she liked having things to help remember all the same</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Her Memories in Ink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her photographs allowed her to live, without fear of forgetting her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sanctuary Bingo prompts: F/F/M and 1940’s

With a life as long as Helen, memories tended to slip away, into the furthest reaches of the subconscious. Some things she remembered; the piano, how to run in an evening dress, how to tie a corset properly. Those were things her muscles remembered; just as they did loading a gun or how to land from a right hook. But for the more intimate details of life, particularly the small details of times when adrenaline had been coursing through her veins and clouding her mind, she needed help to remember. 

That’s why Helen was so grateful to have been captured on film so many times throughout her life. Her photo frames were the post-it notes of her life; tiny, precious things that jump started her memory and let her mind keep the most important things at the forefront. It was more important that Helen remembered the various sectors of the brain than the dress she wore on the Titanic, or the food she ate. In order for the brain to maintain function, she needed to be able to forget things; not forever, but enough to not recall details at the drop of a hat. Her photographs gave her the freedom to stay sane. 

The ones she kept around her office were just the tip of the iceberg. Those were special, obviously; they were mementos of friends, and sometimes lovers. Those were the moments captured by cameras focusing on tremendous achievements and important dates; Amelia before her great flight, Churchill at the end of the Second World War, just after Nikola had skipped the country. The images mightn’t have appeared on the front pages of the papers; mostly to keep Helen’s anonymity safe, but they were no less significant to history than the images that did. 

Keeping the photos in her office served to remind herself of the history she’d witnessed; all the victories and the heart ache. As well as proving to her employees, and rivals, that she was capable, and would always be, of running her father’s legacy. She’d been running the Global Sanctuary Network for longer than most of the other heads of house has been breathing, and would continue to do so long after they ceased. It was nice to be surrounded by trophies to her life’s work.  
The photographs she kept in her room were among the more sentimental; meant for her eyes only, and a few select few she invited into her private chambers. 

She had a photograph of her parents on the mantel piece; the only remainder she had of her mother, save her piano. Another image of Gregory Magnus, take just prior to his departure on the mission he never returned from sat next to it. A photo of Henry winning first prize in a science fair was on the other side of the mantel piece, next to a photo and him and the Big Guy one Halloween. 

On her bedside table was a photograph of James and Ashley, out the front of her Sanctuary. It had been taken the first day she’d controlled operations from her new head of operations, and James had travelled across with her. Partially to look after Ashley while her mother ran around; _like a headless chicken_ , he had said, as Helen tried to maintain her sanity. A dozen Heads of House hounding you while you were trying to sort out your sock draw would have that effect on monk. Helen Magnus was only human; despite what people thought. 

Underneath her bed were volumes of black and white photographs, polaroids, and negative print. Those for Helen’s eyes only; the _extremely_ select few who knew of their existence were the photographers who took them and the models she posed with. Faceless men and women, whose bodies Helen knew so well, filled the frames alongside Helen. A memento of her first trip to Capri; where Helen suspected this kink first started. Gabriella and her husband, taken the weekend of Helen’s first week in Paris. The bed was barely visible through the tangle of limbs and hair.

Two strangers inside her own home, which Helen _never_ did; a woman with mad curls and a man with the face of a child. Somehow they’d known about Helen’s collection and where extremely eager to add to it; thought they never asked to see the final images. Helen collected photographs as others did fine art; not for their monetary value, but for their beauty. Her images were precious; their frames encased her life and helped her remember. 

Her photographs allowed her to live without suffocating and breathe without forgetting.


	2. Her Heart in a Hardcover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fiction can have a practical purpose, as well being simply for enjoyment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set post End of Nights.
> 
> Sanctuary Bingo prompt: Edwardian Era.
> 
> (Repost of an older word to fix formatting)

Helen’s bookshelf was vast.

Not the library, although that was formidable, to say the least. The library was filled with her father’s books; the last worldly things that remind of him. Journals, encyclopaedias, and scientific manuscripts collected over a life time, and added upon for another two. For all the Helen had contributed to its contents, the library would always be her father’s domain. She adored Gregory’s vault of information, but it was just that; information.

Helen’s bookshelves were far more precious, far more private. Full of memories; tears and tantrums were trapped within the covers, along with flowers and love pressed between its pages. It was sorted by author, as all books should be. However, rather then it be alphabetical, as one would assume; Helen sorted by use. Not usefulness, as one would non-fiction, but by how often she read and re-read them. When that failed to help differentiate, Helen went for era.

The shelf at eyelevel was her favourite; Victorian, Edwardian and contemporary literature.

Doyle. Her friend’s mind captured in print for all eternity; Helen found that somewhat comforting. The Five had their legacies; Helen’s was her life, Nikola’s his inventions, and James had Holmes. H. G. Wells; given to Helen while the ink was still dry. Although this was Nigel’s legacy, she couldn’t read any of those books without a smile creeping onto her face, or arousal flooding her body as she recalled memories of a life time ago.

Potter. All first editions signed by Beatrix, and sealed with a kiss. Ashley had loved those books as a child; something that Helen was always grateful for. Introducing her daughter to abnormals had been far easier; knowing the tiny blonde already saw all living beings as things to be respected. Those books had make taking her to Old City for the first time far less daunting. Grahame. Another favourite of Ashley’s, battered and well loved. Even after Ashley had matured well past bed time stories, Helen hadn’t been able to read it without doing the various voices in her head. Now she couldn’t read it at all.

J. M. Barrie; never read nor indeed opened, but precious all the same. She had seen the play, on its opening night, and that had been enough. It had been years since she had first met James, and the original events had been altered considerable, but she always laughed when people commented that Peter was played by a woman; it was a joke Helen shared with the universe. A joke, that maybe one day, other people would understand. Besides, Helen had the actual events written in her journal; it felt strange to read a fabrication where the never ageing character was a boy.

Those and so, so many more titles filled her room. Mementos, keep sakes, the written word acting like photographs; a chronology of Helen’s lifetimes and those she’d shared it with. The contents old and worm, well-read and well loved.

Then Pratchett: alone and solitary, the only contemporary author Helen thought worthy. She had had never met the author, knew nothing of the where his Disc world came from, nor did believe she ever would. Perhaps that made him all the more astounding; his work was there on its own merit, rather than memories or bookmarks of her life. It looked somewhat out of place, next to the greatest minds of the century before his, but Helen though he deserved a place next to them.

Helen’s library was vast; she had live two lifetimes and the written word acted as a scrapbook for her existence.


End file.
